#LekkiMassacre: “We Paid With Our Blood”- Nigerian Youths Pay Tribute To Victims Of Tollgate Shootout

Nigerians have since adopted October 20 as the official day to mourn and pay tribute to the individuals who were shot during that fateful night at the Lekki tollgate.

Recounting what happened:

2020 Lekki Tollgate Massacre Tribute

On the night of 20 October 2020, at about 6:50 p.m., members of the Nigerian Army opened fire on unarmed End SARS protesters at the Lekki toll gate in Lagos State, Nigeria. Amnesty International stated that at least 12 protesters were killed during the shooting. A day after the incident, on 21 October, the governor of Lagos State, Babajide Sanwo-olu, initially denied reports of any loss of lives, but later admitted in an interview with a CNN journalist that “only two persons were killed”.

The Nigerian Army initially denied involvement in the shooting, but later stated that it had deployed soldiers to the toll gate on the orders of the governor of Lagos State. A month after the shooting, following a CNN documentary on the shooting, the Nigerian Army admitted to the Lagos Judiciary panel of inquiry into the shooting that it had deployed its personnel to the toll gate with both live and blank bullets.

Previous Nigerian Army crackdowns

The Nigerian Army has been known to open fire and kill unarmed civilians in previous incidents, most notably was the 2015 Zaria massacre and 2018 attack on Shiite Muslims who were protesting against the jailing of a cleric in which 45 Nigerians were killed. Three sons of Sheikh El-Zakzaky were killed alongside about 30 other followers of the Sheikh on July 25, 2014. Since the country’s return to civilian rule in 1999, soldiers have killed unarmed civilians in several incidents including: Odi, Zaki Biam, Baga, Zaria, and Abonema. The incident at the Lekki tollgate on October 20, 2020, however runs contrary to the above examples as the testimonies documented in the leaked report of the Judicial panel of inquiry and the subsequent white paper released by the Lagos State government’s committee to review the aforementioned report do not support the narrative that a massacre indeed occurred at the Lekki tollgate. Although the panel members relied almost exclusively on testimony provided by an alleged eyewitness to arrive at a conclusion, the expert testimonies by the pathologist and two forensic teams engaged by the panel and the Lagos State government did not however support the summary of the 309-page report.

End SARS

End SARS is a decentralised social movement and series of mass protests against police brutality in Nigeria. The slogan calls for the disbanding of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS).

In 2016, a human rights activist, Segun Awosanya popularly known as Segalink started EndSARS campaign on social media prompting police authority to announce reform of the police unit but nothing was achieved at the time. In 2018, Nigerian rapper Michael Ugochukwu Stephens, known by his stage name Ruggedman, joined the campaign to end police brutality releasing a single titled, “Is Police Your Friend?”

The protests became more popular in 2017 on Twitter using the hashtag #EndSARS to demand the Nigerian government disband and reform the police unit.

Within a few days of renewed protests, some claimed victory when, on Sunday, 11 October 2020, the Nigerian Police Force announced it would be dissolving SARS. However, many noted similar promises had been made in recent years, and that the government planned to reassign and review SARS officers to medical centers rather than remove them entirely. The Lekki toll gate shooting promptly ended the protest movement.

Casualties

In a report on 21 October, Amnesty International stated that at least 12 protesters were killed in what the organization described as “extrajudicial executions”. A former marketer with Etisalat Telecommunications Company (now 9Mobile) was reported to be one of the casualties. Denying this, Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, claimed that no one was killed at Lekki and later posted on Twitter that one person died at the hospital as a result of blunt force trauma to the head, and that the connection to the protest was under investigation. The Nigerian military denied responsibility for the shooting, tweeting that media reports were “fake news”.

According to witnesses, the military did not allow ambulances to provide aid and removed corpses from the scene of the shooting.

In testimony during April and May 2021 before the Lagos State Judicial Panel, a witness stated that by her reckoning based in part on video evidence at least 10 people died in the shooting. According to Premium Times reporting, they could count five bodies from the videos with many additional injuries.

Aftermath

On the day of the shooting, on 20 October 2020, the government imposed a city-wide round-the-clock curfew in Lagos which was to start at 4 p.m. which had only been announced earlier that day around 1 p.m. via social media. Protesters defied the curfew although it was later extended till 9 p.m. by the Lagos State Governor, staging several demonstrations, and gunfire could be heard throughout the city. Several fires burned throughout Lagos after the shooting. A few hours after the massacre, the Lagos State Governor visited the injured victims in hospitals in Lagos. In a statement on Twitter, he attributed the massacre to “forces beyond our direct control.”

The following days after the Lekki massacre witnessed a lot of violence by hoodlums not associated with the #EndSars protest. The looting of shops, burning and destruction of properties of private individuals and government in some parts of Lagos began late in the night of the massacre and spilled into the following morning until military personnel were deployed to the streets of Lagos to restore calm and order.

CNN documentary[edit]

On November 18, a month after the incident, CNN aired a six-minute documentary on the shooting, the independent investigation showed geolocated photographs of victims and eyewitness accounts, as well as the families of victims, alongside verified trended videos of the shooting using timestamps and data from video files. CNN said that Nigerian authorities refused to comment when they were contacted for clarifications. The documentary also revealed that in collaboration with the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, CNN was able to establish that several of the bullet casings from the Lekki Toll Gate, originated from Serbia from where Nigeria had imported bullets every year between 2005 and 2016. The documentary has given rise to another wave of outrage, this time mostly towards the Nigerian authorities’ changing narrative in the face of naked evidence. In its response, the Nigerian Army insists that its members were ‘professional in their conduct’ and did not breach rules of engagement. Nigeria’s Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed, accused CNN of ‘irresponsible journalism’ and described the documentary of the product of fake news and disinformation.

On November 24, as part of its investigations into the shooting, CNN obtained and released CCTV footages from government surveillance cameras overlooking the toll gate presented to the Lagos Judiciary panel of inquiry investigating police brutality, the abuses of the disbanded SARS and the toll gate shooting. The CCTV footage and other footages from the scene at the time showed soldiers shooting at protesters from both ends of the Toll Gate. Corroborating a previous testimony given by the Lekki Concession Company to the panel, the footage stopped at about 8 pm because the CCTV had been tampered with, ostensibly to provide cover for the shooting. Though yet to provide any counter evidence, Nigerian authorities continue to deny that soldiers shot at protesters.

2021 End SARS Memorial protest[edit]

In the aftermath of End SARS protest, End SARS Activists announced that there would be a memorial to mark the Lekki Shootings. On October 19, 2021, Mr Macaroni and Falz announced that a protest would be carried out in vehicles, with respect to the message by the Lagos state Police force which prohibited any form of protest. Protests took place mostly in Lagos, Abuja, and Port Harcourt, among others.

• An extract form publication on wekipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Lekki_shooting

Video: PORTRAITS OF BLOOD (II): Names, Photos, Videos… How Lekki #EndSARS Protesters Were Massacred

made by The Foundation for Investigative Journalism (FIJ)

https://fij.ng/article/portraits-of-blood-ii-names-photos-videos-how-lekki-endsars-protesters-were-massacred/

https://youtu.be/GinjGw7i7HY